Failing to Knit a Hot Water Bottle Cozy (And My Plans to Fix It)

Hi everyone! Months ago, I decided to knit myself new clothes, accessories, and home decor items that I want to use. I already owned items made with knitted fabric, but they are either white or a pale color and not washable. I had serious concerns about them getting dirty, so I decided to knit myself some new items using machine washable yarn and use them instead. One of the first items I wanted to make was a hot water bottle cozy. I found a pattern online for a cozy I liked and began to knit it.

From the first time I read the pattern, I had my doubts about how easy it would be. So, instead of worrying about using my good yarn to make the cozy, I decided to use a scene of Red Heart’s Super Saver Jumbo in the color Aran. It can be washed and dried by machine and I thought it would give me more than enough yardage to make a cozy to test the pattern and another cozy with a fixed pattern. I’m glad I used it because the pattern didn’t work out the way I thought it would!

Once I finished it, the cozy looked like this…

As you can see, it’s way too small to fit a hot water bottle!

I checked the pattern to see if I read it correctly and I had. When I read the pattern for the first time, I had my doubts that the body of the cozy would be large enough to fit a hot water bottle. Still, I wanted to try it and see if I was right. Obviously, I was right.

Since the pattern makes a cozy that doesn’t fit a hot water bottle, I tried to figure out what to do with it, aside from keep it as a reference for what not to do when I make myself any future hot water bottle cozy knitting patterns. I realized the cozy would be a great cozy for a wine or olive oil bottle. The neck of the cozy is long enough to fit a bottle and, after trying it on a bottle of olive oil, it fit pretty well. It won’t fit every since olive oil or wine bottle available to purchase, but the body of the cozy is very stretchy and is pretty forgiving for different types of bottles. Since realizing how well the cozy fit a bottle, I felt better about making it and the pattern I used. If I decide to give away olive oil bottles as a gift and I have the time to knit, I think I could knit some cozies to put on them and give them away as gifts.

As for why the pattern didn’t work out right, it was harder to figure out. After reading the pattern many times over, I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong until I found a section after the knitting pattern that talks about wet blocking the cozy. The section said wet blocking is not needed to make the cozy the right size for a hot water bottle, but obviously it does. I didn’t want to wet block the cozy because it will cause the cozy to no longer be machine washable. I wanted the cozy to be machine washable, which is why I wanted to make one from scratch.

I’m very disappointed with this pattern. I will not mention where I got the pattern from, but I hope the photographs I took of my cozy does not make it obvious where I got the pattern from. Still, I know the pattern has some good parts to it. The neck of the cozy is long enough for a hot water bottle and is stretchy enough to fit the neck of a bottle. Also, I like the pattern in the front of the cozy. I can see this pattern has potential, so I want to create a hot water bottle cozy based off the pattern. This time, I want it to actually fit a hot water bottle without wet blocking!

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!